


Lullabies

by Decepticonsensual



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-11
Updated: 2013-11-11
Packaged: 2018-01-01 05:18:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1040800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Decepticonsensual/pseuds/Decepticonsensual
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takes place after Transformers Prime ends; spoilers through "Deadlock", with potential spoilers for "Predacons Rising".  Cybertron has been restored, and a new generation is growing up that has never known war.  Everything seems perfect... but why is it that Cybertron's newborn children keep talking about a voice no one else can hear?  Warning:  This one gets dark, with gore and mentions of torture.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lullabies

For a long time after the revival of Cybertron, no one realised it was happening.  After all, only the newsparks who crawled from the now-restored Well experienced it, and they didn’t know enough to understand that there was anything unusual about it – well, anything _particularly_ unusual, since the whole world was new to them at first.  Other Cybertronians; the wild, sunlit expanse of their planet; learning to transform:  all of these were every bit as strange as the song that came in the night.  But while the other things sometimes frightened or confused them, the song never did.  It soothed them through their first terrifying nights of life, like an unseen hand stroking over their helms in sleep.

It was years before a teacher at one of the new academies started a music class, and started by asking her students whether they knew any songs.  (The arts were beginning to take root on the new world, as more of the exiles returned, but it was a slow process.)  Every hand shot into the air, to the teacher’s delight; and one volunteer got up and sang what seemed to be some kind of lullaby.

_Dear little wanderer, lost in the dark,_

_Hush and lie still, close your eyes,_

_Dream of a dawning as bright as your spark,_

_And the world will rise up when you rise._

The teacher applauded and asked where the student had learned such a pretty little song, only to be met by puzzled stares.  But… it was _the song._ How could you not know _the song?_ That was like asking what transformation was!

The song started to crop up elsewhere.  It turned into a playground chant in one school; a returning refugee who founded a choir in a different city had all his younger choristers clamouring to sing the same song, and reacting with shock and dismay when the choirmaster didn’t recognise it.  Slowly, as the newsparks grew, their mentors began to piece together that the song was not some childish fad that had been passed from bot to bot, or broadcast on the datanet.

It was in all of the new Cybertronians.  It always had been.

Ratchet reluctantly emerged from retirement to supervise the tests at the request of the new High Council.  A room full of recharging bots – from infants to young adults, but all born after the restoration of Cybertron – tossed and murmured in their sleep.  Ratchet sighed, checking his chronometer.  This was ridiculous –

Suddenly, the entire room went still.  Fitful sleepers were sprawled out, strutless, in a sleep as deep as the Well itself.  And _something_ was coming through the speakers hooked up to their processors… something slowed and distorted, but unmistakable.

Bumblebee took the call, which roused him from his own recharge cycle.  “Whoa, whoa – Doc, slow down.  What do you mean, _it’s from another dimension_?”

But it was already too late.  At that very moment, a young peace-born mech was starting the night shift operating one of the groundbridge transport hubs when he heard a voice speaking inside his mind.  That should have terrified him, but he recognised it instantly.  It was the same deep, soft voice that had sung him to sleep every night since he was born.  How could he possibly be afraid?

 _Go to the groundbridge controls,_ the voice urged him gently, _and enter what I tell you…_

The bridge spiraled open.

As if lightning had gone through them, every peace-born mech on the planet bolted upright, their optics flaming red.

Older mecha, roused by the noise of thousands of feet marching in unison, emerged to find the younger bots all trooping relentlessly towards the same point.  Some of the older bots were so shaken that they fled.  They were the lucky ones.  Others ran after their students, their neighbours, their friends… only to find the march stopping, and hundreds of bright red optics turning towards them.  With a preternatural strength, the young mechs sprang, claws and sharp dentae ripping at old, battle-worn plating, glossas slurping obscenely at the spurting energon…

… And Soundwave stepped through the portal.

***

_Dear little wanderer, lost in the dark_

They were there to greet him, his children.  Sated and grown strong with the lifeblood of their one-time mentors, those cowards who had once run from the war.  Soundwave could see it still glistening at the corners of their mouths as they cried out to him; as they lifted their voices, as one, to sing.

_Hush and lie still, close your eyes_

The members of Team Prime, alone, he ordered spared.  He has a special place for them – a series of cells in the depths of the revived fortress of Darkmount.  Each is scarcely big enough to contain a berth, but they need no more than that.  The Autobots lie motionless, hooked up to machines that pump immobilising toxins through them, so they are unable even to blink; and yet they are also kept awake, robbed even of recharge.  The walls are thick enough that no sound penetrates.

Let _them_ learn what it is to be trapped alone in a silent hell.

_Dream of a dawning as bright as your spark_

Soundwave has never lost faith that Megatron will return to Cybertron, and when he does, his most faithful servant will be there to present the planet to him.  In the meantime, Soundwave has the fierce devotion of his children, as they go about building a world that will be more than just a copy of the corrupted Cybertron of old.  They remind him of his lost deployers, sometimes, with their bright energy and their laughter.  And at night, he sings to them still.

_And the world will rise up when you rise._


End file.
